Track 9

Unit 6

History

The Silk Road

page 55

tried out

Good morning.

In today’s lecture. I’m going to present a little background leading up to the silk Road, starting in the year 330 BCE.

By the way, BCE stands for before the common era.

Okay. So, in 330 BCE Alexander the great conquered a large area. The area that is roughly Iran, Syria and Iraq today.

There were some trade routes already there, but he wanted to develop more and he did so, but not for long, because in 325 BCE, the Romans attacked Alexander the great and one, so it wasn’t 325 BCE that the Romans took control of that region.

Like Alexander, they too wanted to develop more trade routes.

Why? In order to get luxury goods such as silk, spices and gold and by about 100 BCE trading with China had begun, so the Romans were getting what they wanted